After spending some time to explore the interior of the tree, Bug fails to find anything of interest and moves on.
While the internal structure of the tree is certainly different than what she was expecting, at the end of the day, she isn’t here to learn about the Dungeon and why it looks the way it does. She is here to conquer the Dungeon and kill it.
Leaving the tree behind and walking along another of the massive branches with her skeletons in tow, Bug keeps her head on a swivel as she navigates around giant flowers and clusters of hanging leaves that cover places like layers of draped curtains.
With Sam the Shield Man leading from the front and pushing aside the leaves, Bug follows behind him nervously as she waits for anything to suddenly attack.
Looking down at her feed, Bug watches as her Kill Notifications finally come to a crawling stop for the day, even ending with her getting another Level-up.
“Aaaannnd… Everything upstairs is now either, dead, Undead, or mushroom… Geez, I really did make this too easy. Although, the required experience per Level-up has been going up steadily. It probably won’t be too much longer until killing everything upstairs isn’t even enough for a single Level.”
Although… Not like it matters anyways. I think I only have maybe one more day where the mushrooms are considered mine. Then I won’t be getting any more experience from them anymore.
But, it is weird… I haven’t gotten any human kills today. Are the humans not trying to push through the mushrooms? If they were, I am pretty sure that I would get at least one or two of them. But to get none at all? It’s weird…
“Hmm, I don’t think that they would give up on the bounty so easily. Those last guys seemed really intent on getting it until I started killing them all… Maybe my bounty just isn’t big enough to risk dying over? Hmm… Not sure how I feel about that.”
…
“Well, I’ll just see if I get any human kills tomorrow, and if I don’t, then that probably means that they have given up on chasing me. Let’s go with that. Besides, I would hate to have to fill this place with even more mushrooms. Even if the experience from killing everything here would be great, it is just for the best that I don’t use that spell unless I must… In the meantime-“
Bug gets interrupted from her musings as a Goblin skeleton jumps next to her, pushing her aside as it gets snatched away in a clattering of bones. The skeleton having moved to block her so quickly that it had taken her by surprise.
Watching the skeleton get pulled through the air by some long pink thing, the skeleton disappears inside of the large gaping maw of something, disappearing with a crunch somewhere on the body of a neighboring tree.
Sam moves to stand before Bug as she remains seated and shocked on the floor. Looking to where her skeleton had just disappeared, Bug scans over the tree, but can’t find any signs of the enemy.
Can’t see it! Is it invisible or something? All I see is bark… I don’t think that the attack came from any of the windows, it looks like it came from the wall… Maybe Identify will work?
Scanning over the tree, Bug continuously pings Identify against the surface of the tree around where the skeleton disappeared.
‘N/A.’
‘N/A.’
‘N/A.’
‘N/A.’
‘N/A.’
‘N/A.’
‘N/A.’
‘N/A.’
‘Gigantes Tree Frogantes. A really big tropical tree frog that can blend in with bark, tree leaves, and even the dropping of some birds.’
‘N/A’
‘N/A’
“There!” Bug points and orders her two flyers forward to attack. Taking off from the back of her new piggy skeleton, the flyers cut through the air on wings of sharpened blade-like wings.
Bug watches the tree as her two flyers go on the attack. Staring at the spot where Identify is pinging the target, Bug sees as it starts to shift and a pink opening shows itself on the tree, aimed towards the incoming flyers.
Dodge!
The poisonous flyer banks off to the side and manages to avoid the tongue at the last moment, but the hoarfrost one fails to move in time and is grabbed.
With a target snatched, and the bone bird flapping its wings violently, the frog reels in its prey and snaps it into its mouth. The poison flyer is quick to follow and dives in claws first to strike the back of the frog.
In a spray of blood, the frog is revealed as it lets out a croaking scream. Opening its mouth, Bug watches as her captured flyer struggles inside of its mouth, wings and claws shredding the insides of its mouth as frost starts to spread and cover the frog.
On its back, the other flyer continues to tear into its back and even goes for its eyes, ripping one of them out and swallowing the thing whole. Only the skeleton doesn’t have a stomach, so the eye sort of just falls out of its ribcage after bouncing around a bit on inside…
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The fight doesn’t last for very long, as the bleeding coming from its mouth becomes a constant flow of frothy half-frozen red. As for its back, the frog apparently doesn’t have any way of protecting its back reliably. Its back is so torn open now, that its camouflage is practically useless.
Watching the frog weaken, Bug panics a bit and calls out to her skeleton. “Hurry up and get out of its mouth!”
The still captured flyer tries to fight its way out of the grip of the tongue, but doesn’t manage to as the frog loses its strength and falls away from the wall.
Recalling the second flyer, Bug moves forward and watches as the frog plummets down below, only to go splat as it hits a branch a couple levels lower.
//Killed lvl 12 Gigantes Tree Frogantes – 38 exp gained!
…
Looking to her mana upkeep, Bug sees that her flyer isn’t ‘dead’ yet, so that means that it is still stuck in its mouth...
“Can you get out of there? Try to cut your way out or something...”
Peering over the branch’s edge as she lays on her stomach. From up above, Bug can see as the corpse wiggles around, probably from the flyer flailing around inside of its mouth…
“I… don’t think that it can get out… oh, lovely…”
Watching from on high, the frog starts to jolt and move around. A few moments later, it is wiggling its legs around. After a few tries, it manages to roll over and get back on to its feet.
“Crap. Turn Undead!”
Regretfully, the spell fails to hit as it is too far away. Completely unable to stop it, Bug watches as the giant zombie frog hops away with her flyer still trapped in its mouth…
“Haaa, great! Just what I need! Now there are going to be Undead running around down there… Uhh, just keep trying to get out of it if you can. If you do, fly back to me if you are able...”
Watching until the frog disappears from sight, Bug knocks her head against the branch a couple of times in frustration before finally standing up and brushing off her clothes.
“Ok! The rest of you, no getting swallowed by frogs!”
Off to the side, one of the Goblins wanders a bit too close to a flower. Splitting open into a maw of drool covered teeth, the flower snaps down on the skeleton and starts to chew on it noisily.
“Holy shit!!! Kill that thing! Kill it! No getting eaten by flowers either!”
----------------------------------------
Progressing though the giant forest of twisting branches, hanging leaves, giant flowers, and vines heavy with fruits of varying colors, Bug and her minions continue to work their way deeper and deeper. No matter how far they walk, they don’t seem to make any notable progress beyond drawing further away from the area they arrived from.
The paths through this place are all nonlinear, twisting around each other, and branching off into new directions seemingly at random. Even the insides of the large trees, while all seeming to have some internal structure of organization and design, are all of different looks and layouts with no two trees sharing more than a couple of similarities between them.
So far, as far as Bug knows, she is lost. Her only choice to just simply wander and have her skeletons kill anything that harasses her, which has turned into both a constant source of annoyance and also a bunch of brand-new minions over the past couple of hours.
“Hmm, am I supposed to just keep following the branches until I hit a wall, or am I supposed to be finding a way to get to the lower branches? I haven’t seen any ways leading down yet, and this place just keeps going and going, I can’t even see the end yet…”
Looking around while her skeletons finish killing a giant centipede thing that had tried to ambush them, Bug tries to figure out where it is that they are supposed to be heading. Up above, the lights that are flowing in though the canopy start to slowly dim and darken.
“Why is it getting dark?”
//Killed lvl 11 Arthropleura– 37 exp gained!
Mmm, ya, ya, more exp. Still need like four thousand for my next one now. The necessary exp per Level-up just keeps getting higher and higher. I don’t think I am going to be able to get very many Levels here…
Checking her clock, Bug sees that it is getting closer to time for the Dungeon to close. It is almost nighttime.
“Does the Dungeon mimic day and night in this area? It didn’t do that on the first four floors… huh.”
After watching the strange phenomenon for a little while, Bug eventually gets everyone moving after raising the giant centipede.
Or Arthropleura… weird name. Why not just call it Giant Centipede?
Walking along, the light continues to dim further and further as the shadows of the giant trees become deeper, swallowing up whole sections of the forest in darkness. The singing of the colorful birds soon gets replaced with the chittering of large bats darting through the air as they hunt equally large flying insects. The most horrible of which are the giant mosquitoes that are bigger than your hand... Thankfully, the bats seem to love eating those the most.
“Going to get dark soon… I’m going to need light.”
Digging into her inventory, Bug takes out a torch she found in a human’s pack and looks it over.
“How do I… Uh, how do I make fire? This flint stuff is described as being useful for making fire, but I don’t know how to do that…”
I could just get the Fire Making skill or the Knowledge, How to Start Fires for Fledgling Arsonists, but even if they are just both one point, I would prefer to not spend my points on stuff that I can probably just earn on my own…
Mmmm, what about the item store?
Going into the store, Bug searches for ‘fire’ and finds a few different items. A flint and steel, a magnesium fire starter rod, bottles of oil, something called napalm that has a bunch of scary warning labels on it, there are manuals on how to start fires that Bug could read, and even a magic lighter among other items.
Sitting down on the back of the mean girl skeleton, Bug considers her options and grimaces as she sees her points.
I haven’t been selling very much stuff lately and I am either keeping bodies for parts or raising them as new minions instead of selling them. This magic lighter would take almost everything I have left. Or I could get a how-to manual and then buy the stuff I need, but even then, I would probably end up using up most of my points…
Hah… I’m never going to get that bed I want, am I?
“Mmmmhmm… what to do… If I get the manual, will I be done reading it before it gets dark? Will I even be able to figure out how to light a torch? It would be a lot easier if… What’s that?”
Off in the distance, Bug sees some lights moving around.
“Hey, Sam, lift me up really quick! As high as you can go!”
Walking over, Sam lowers himself to one knee and helps Bug climb up him until she is standing on his shoulders. Standing up, Bug has to grab hold of his horns to keep from falling off as she is raised into the air.
With her feet getting cold from standing on his ice-covered body, Bug quickly looks to where she saw the lights and squints at them.
“It looks like… Humans! Yes! I can just ask the humans how! I’ll have them teach me how to make fire and tell me about this place. And if they don’t, I’ll kill them. Perfect!”
Being as far away as they are, Bug would have never noticed them if it were not for the light of their torches moving though the shadows of the great trees. A coincidence that they will probably soon come to regret…
Hopping down from Sam’s shoulders and feeling excited, Bug looks around for a path that will lead to the humans. Running along the branches with her army of over a hundred skeletons in tow, she tries to keep the humans in sight lest she end up losing them.
Eventually, as Bug climbs to a slightly elevated branch, Bug sees the humans hurry into the body of a nearby tree and disappear inside. The last light of their torches can be spotted from the windows on the side of the tree before vanishing somewhere deeper inside.
“Hmm, looks like that path over their will bring me towards them. I should be able to make it before the light sets. But I gotta hurry. Come on guys, I'm going to go say hello!”